Compact Flash CF Freezes at XP Boot Screen

spudgunblunder · 02-06-2007, 03:40 AM

Can someone help with this?
Along with attempts at USB stick install and then finally realising I'll never boot from USB on my MB I'M GOING CRAZY!

Anyway back to the point.
Compact Flash card is a 2GB Sandisk Ultra II Rip off from eBay.
(BIOS recognises it as "Hyperstone Flash Disk")

Using this CF to IDE adapter.

What I've done:
(Followed this guide)

1) Created my nlited XP Pro SP2 disc using post #28 .ini settings from here.

2) Connected DVD writer (S-M) and CF card (P-M) and Booted into DOS with this disc.

3) Ran fdisk, created primary FAT32 partition and set it to boot.

4) Formatted using format c: /s/x. Restarted and it boots DOS fine.

5) Reformat using format c: /x.

6) Connected CF to Card reader (windows shows it as "REMOVABLE DEVICE") and copy Bootprep.exe onto CF. Then plug back into IDE adapter and boot into DOS from CD. Ran bootprep /dc and accept twice. Done with no errors.

7) Connect HD to another PC using an IDE to USB adapter and backup XP using Windows Backup.

8) Plug in CF to card reader and restore XP install using Windows Backup.

9) Plug back into CF-IDE adapter and XP boots past 1st Boot screen but then freezes on the 2nd (logon screen?)
(Can't find a pic anywhere and some1's borrowing my cam so I made it up)

I 1st tried using my current XP install which was fully setup with CF and minlogon+EWF but it did'nt work. So this time I used a clean install of XP.

Does anyone know what I could have done wrong?

SFiorito · 02-06-2007, 07:10 AM

don't use windows backup, just copy the files over manually. also, fake SanDisk cards may not implement the IDE protocol properly and may cause it to fail when used with an IDE adapter.

spudgunblunder · 02-06-2007, 06:16 PM

If I just copy the files I get:

Disk error. Press any key to restart.

Boot Failure.
Reboot and select proper boot device. etc.

This is the list of files I coppied from the HD:
(except Bootprep.exe which I copied to run it in DOS and bootrec.old which bootprep.exe created - should I delete these?)

Documents and Settings
Program Files
WINDOWS
AUTOEXEC.BAT
boot.ini
BOOTPREP.EXE
BOOTREC.OLD
CONFIG.SYS
IO.SYS
MSDOS.SYS
NTDETECT.COM
ntdr

spudgunblunder · 02-06-2007, 06:24 PM

Just noticed a difference between Windows backup and simple copy in windows:

Win Backup includes:
FOLDERS
$RECYCLE.BIN
MSOCache
RECYCLER
System Volume Information

FILE
ntldr_bak

I was gonna try ghost but I don't think you can restore to a removeable drive?
Why would manually copying the files not work?

spudgunblunder · 02-06-2007, 06:52 PM

Also forgot that I re-sized the HD partition with PartitionMagic 8 to about 1.8GB after installing XP. I was right to do this? I think my install is only 500mb without page file but I read that widows has trouble installing with less than 3GB space.

SFiorito · 02-06-2007, 07:05 PM

Try just placing NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM, and BOOT.INI on the card after formatting FAT32 and running bootprep. That's all you need to see if XP can boot from the device. Set the Timeout to 30 so you can see the boot menu.

Most likely the card won't work because it's not a good CF card. Sorry, but you get what you pay for.

spudgunblunder · 02-06-2007, 07:07 PM

I usually end up realising that after having spend a loada $ on crap!

But at least I'm learning.

spudgunblunder · 02-06-2007, 07:11 PM

My boot.ini looks like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Do I need to change anything?

spudgunblunder · 02-06-2007, 07:22 PM

I tried what you suggested but I just get:

Disk error. Press any key to restart.

Boot Failure.
Reboot and select proper boot device. etc...

spudgunblunder · 02-06-2007, 07:32 PM

Got a different message this time:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<Windows root>\system32\hal.dll.
Please reinstall a copy of the above file.

Is this good news?

SFiorito · 02-06-2007, 08:00 PM

Yeah, try copying the rest of the files now. If you're getting errors while simply copying files though.....maybe something hardware related (either the card, adapter, or IDE cable).

spudgunblunder · 02-07-2007, 05:23 AM

I got it to work! Don't quite know how but I think it's because this time I did'nt use the usb adapter to copy the files. However I did try it in another computer and could not get any picture (dodgy monitor setup) but any way, when I put the cf back in my CarPC. It started to boot then did a disk error check found a bunch of errors:

Checking file system on C:
The type of the file system is FAT32.

One of your disks needs to be checked for consistency. You
may cancel the disk check, but it is strongly recommended
that you continue.
Windows will now check the disk.
Volume Serial Number is 45C9-7009
Bad links in lost chain at cluster 128 corrected.
Bad links in lost chain at cluster 129 ....

......links in lost chain at cluster 178 corrected.
Bad links in lost chain at cluster 179 corrected.
Lost chain cross-linked at cluster 180. Orphan truncated.
Bad links in lost chain at cluster 181 corrected.
Lost chain cross-linked at cluster 182. Orphan truncated.
Bad links in lost chain at cluster 183 corr........

..... links in lost chain at cluster 206 corrected.
Lost chain cross-linked at cluster 207. Orphan truncated.
Bad links in lost chain at cluster 208 corrected.
Bad links in lost chain at cluster 209 corrected.
Bad links in lost chain at cluster 255 corrected.
Convert lost chains to files (Y/N)? Yes
339968 bytes in 83 recovered files.
Windows has made corrections to the file system.

2052079616 bytes total disk space.
278421504 bytes in 260 hidden files.
2187264 bytes in 504 folders.
477573120 bytes in 4600 files.
1293893632 bytes available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
500996 total allocation units on disk.
315892 allocation units available on disk.

I think this was caused by having to pull the power cord on the psu of the other computer I tested it in.

Just to make sure - Say the card has a max of 10 million writes. I take it that is per cell? So if I copy 10 million small files to my CF card and fill it then after that it's not going to fail? But if I write one file to the same part of the card 10 million times, then it'll fail.
Is this right?

spudgunblunder · 02-07-2007, 05:56 AM

Why the hell won't XCOPY work in DOS 6.22. It's on the disc but just says:
"Command or filename invalid"

I want to just copy the XP install from HD to CF using
XCOPY D:\ C:\ /S/E/H

spudgunblunder · 02-07-2007, 09:07 AM

Wish the computer would just give me a quick slap to let me know I forgot to click "set" when changing to no paging file.

After all this it's not really the white knuckle ride I was expecting.
But what can expect for £13.

SFiorito · 02-07-2007, 12:06 PM

with a better CF card it'll boot much quicker